


The record keeper

by Shulik



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shulik/pseuds/Shulik





	The record keeper

Colin Creevey was drunk.

No, let’s put it in a better way- he was absolutely plastered. He was currently sitting in his flat, wearing a pair of dingy old broom and snitch pyjamas that had gotten so ancient that the snitch had stopped whizzing around the material and now just fluttered weakly as if to remind one of its continued miserable existence. He had a fairly large bottle of firewhiskey-laced butterbeer leaning against his thigh, his three day stubble was threatening to turn patchy and he had his photo albums out.

Colin had just gotten sacked from his Head Photographer job at the Prophet not six hours previously. It was a miserable sacking, complete with Skeeter cursing his Gryffindor roots, his parents, his lack of talent- and most surprisingly his hair. Colin frowned, why did they always go for the hair? Granted, it was nothing special but it had turned blonder with age and was now a fairly golden color. He was somewhat proud of it even.

He took another sip of the alcohol and opened the album labeled ‘Friends.’ He was in the first picture, a group one from their sixth year- it was right before he had to go home for the hols and Voldemort had come back full force. Colin scowled, he didn’t like to think of that time, spending a year wasting away at home while his friends fought. He had come back when Neville sent out the call and had fought next to Oliver outside. He was lucky that Malfoy had stumbled into them when he did, the Slytherin Prince turned reluctant spy had saved Colin’s life and he had never let him forget it.

But back to the picture. In it, a younger Colin stands on the periphery wringing his hands nervously at being brought into the group that he’s spent six years following and worshiping. He has a tentative smile on his face and doesn’t know whether to run and hide or to stand there proud with the fact that he’s finally _in_.

Dean and Seamus stand next to him, Dean has his arms wrapped tightly a shyly smiling Ginny and Seamus has his usual cocky grin on his freckled face. Their shoulders are touching and Colin has to physically tear his gaze away from the picture of his two dead friends.

Harry, Ron and Hermione stand at the center- Colin snorts drunkenly, don’t they always? Ron has his arm slung around Hermione’s shoulders and is leaning down to her ear whispering something. By the flush working up her neck, Colin can only guess at what it is. Harry stands next to Hermione but he’s glaring at somebody just out of view. Probably Malfoy lurking somewhere behind the camera. Faith and Neville stand next to them, and they’re still friends in this picture- they’re still close. She’s riding on his back and Neville is laughing as her hair swings wildly around them. They’re connected in this picture, like always.

Colin takes a swig out of the bottle and turns the page. Ginny’s wedding. He smiles wistfully, they’re all seventeen- innocent yet so horribly tense about the upcoming war. It feels like the war is sending its shadow over them and each picture is tainted with the foreshadowing of horrors to come. Here’s Ginny and Dean during their first dance, his arms are wrapped around her and she looks completely safe in his embrace. Her dress is a long ivory sheath with lace details and she is a princess come out of fairytale. They’re leaning towards each other and Ginny’s eyes are half closed in contentment and Dean looks so proud of himself that it feels like he’s about to burst.

The next picture is of Faith, Malfoy and Parkinson lounging together during the intermission. The three of them are on a couch with Malfoy resplendent in a set of slate grey robes sitting between the two brunettes. His habitual smirk is firmly in place and his elbows are leaning on his knees as he leans forward. Faith is leaning towards Pansy behind his back and the two women are sharing what looks to be an inside joke if their devious grins are anything to go by. They look like reflections of each other, Faith in a tight red dress that makes her skin glow and Pansy in a short black sheath that makes her boobs look ginormous. Colin grins as he remembers the pissy mood that Neville was in that whole day as the number of people hitting on Faith steadily increased and her little stack of floo addresses grew in direct proportion.

Colin had always wondered why Faith was sorted into Gryffindor, she had always seemed so much more comfortable with the Slytherins, so much more loose and relaxed and at home.

Colin turned a few of the other pages over and paused at one even as his brain urged him to move on. Dean’s funeral two years previously. Ginny ensconced in a tight hug of female flesh, Hermione, Pansy, Faith all standing with their arms around the sobbing redhead. Her eyes raised in anguish and the pure pain in them is unspeakable. Harry and Malfoy standing side by side, not fighting for once and their hands are almost touching as they stare at the lowered casket. The Weasley family huddled behind Ginny, their collective grief too much to bear. Lavender standing with Parvati off to the side, their hands grasping like a lifeline to each other- they had always reminded Colin of Dean and Seamus, the closeness of their friendships almost a mirror image.

He closed his eyes and flipped the album open again in random hoping that this time it would be on a better picture, on a better occasion. He sighed in relief as he saw that he had flipped open the album to Faith and Neville’s wedding pictures.

Their wedding was a far cry from the small student-attended service of Ginny and Dean, their wedding was a bloody _affair_ to remember.

He smiled as he saw Luna flitting through the pictures, her grey suit surprisingly shapely on her long limbs. She hadn’t lost her usual sense of kookiness and detached insightfulness but she had grown into a capable young woman.

His heart constricted as he saw the pictures of Ginny with Dean and a newborn Vianne in their arms, their happiness was palpable and there was no way in hell that anybody could predict that she would become a widow only a year later.

There was a picture that he had snapped in the bride’s changing room, Faith stood with Pansy and Hermione- they were helping her put on a veil. Parkinson and Hermione would give each other little glares from time to time, seven years of enmity apparently not easily forgotten but they were never malicious, as if they had brokered a truce for their mutual friends’ wedding.

There was a picture of Faith and Neville cutting the wedding cake, an enormous monstrosity that practically radiated chocolate spores in a ten foot vicinity. They grinned moonily at one other as they fed each other the sloppy confection, Colin grinned at their obvious affection for one another.

Colin flipped over the page and paused at one of the newer pictures. It was taken at the Burrow, outside during one of the most sweltering summer days that Britain had seen in a while. Ginny was dozing in a rocking chair with Vianne sprawled over her chest, the toddler blinked sleepily at the camera. In the background a Quidditch game was underway and Colin’s camera had somehow managed to zoom in on Malfoy and Harry. The two seekers were perched on their brooms across each other, Harry was shouting something down to Ron who played goal-keeper as usual while Malfoy was just staring at Harry. The look on his face was of such intense longing, of hopelessness and _need_ that Colin’s breath stole away once again.

This wasn’t the first time that he had seen this picture and yet every time that he came across it, he felt like he was seeing a little piece of Draco Malfoy’s soul bared.

Colin pursed his lips and shut the album with a resounding bang!

He chugged down the rest of the alcohol and wiped the excess liquid of his mouth. This album was the reason for him getting his career ruined. Skeeter wouldn’t stop at just firing him, the bloody cow would bar his employment with any other decent publication- Colin had effectively become persona non-grata within the journalistic world for refusing to give his private pictures of his friends to Rita Skeeter for publishing. Opportunistic cow, like he would _ever_ stoop to her levels.

 _A tap sounded on the window and he focused his bleary gaze on an incredibly annoyed looking owl. It looked like it had been tapping against the window for a while and was getting annoyed with him for sitting on the floor drunk, lost in his memories._

 _He braved the incredible vertigo and got up while muttering slurred curses. “Alright, alright already bloody bird. I’m coming, hang on a sec…” Colin hung his head down and waited for the blood to stop rushing to his brain._

 _Slowly, gingerly he made his way to the window and opened it. The owl immediately flew inside, perched on his dinner table and held out its leg with an imperious air. Colin unrolled the parchment it handed to him and absently gestured to a plate half full of stale crisps, “Help yourself.”_

 _The owl made a sort of huffing, scoffing noise as it flew back out the window. Colin stared after it, he could have sworn that the bird possessed the same look of disgusted disdain that Malfoy had perfected over the years. Last he heard though, Malfoy had been using a black hawk- now a woodland grey owl._

 _He scratched at his stomach and read what the parchment said._

 __Col,_ _

_We heard about what that cow Skeeter did. What a bitch for not giving you a holiday and then sacking you out of the blue! Hermione says that she’s already getting ideas on how to take revenge and Faith keeps cracking her knuckles quite menacingly, in short- don’t worry, we’ve got your back! You have an interview with Luna’s dad on Tuesday and he’s already said that he loves the candidness of your work. He's even talking about letting you have that exhibition you've always wanted._

 _We’re attaching a portkey to take you to us, we still have four days left in the cottage and the proprietor doesn’t care about how many of us are in here. It will activate within an hour of you touching it with the password, so make sure you’re good and ready._

 _We’ll see you soon,_

 _Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Faith, Ginny and Vianne._

 _P.S. This is a good one for your collection, hope you like it._

 

The lump in his throat had gotten bigger as he unraveled the parchment to see that a photo had been attached inside. It was the seven of them, laughing in the sea’s shallow water. Ron was hugging Ginny and had his niece perched on his shoulders, Vianne looked extremely busy as she smeared sand into his bright red locks. Harry was swinging Hermione around, her hair was wet and they were both laughing raucously as her feet left the water. And only Neville and Faith stood more or less still, she was cocooned in his arms and he had his chin on her shoulder though once in a while she would stroke his arm with fond affection.

Colin grinned drunkenly and realized that he had began crying. He wiped the moisture off his face with a surreptitious glance at the photograph only to see the figures act like they weren’t witnessing a twenty three year old man bawl over a simple picture.

But it was all of it, the simple act of support, the portkey to bring him on the vacation he had refused to go on because of work, the interview at the Quibbler and a new addition to his collection- _all of it mattered_.

He lumbered back to his previous spot and dropped near the forgotten album. He opened it to an empty page and carefully attached the new photograph with it’s predecessors. He closed the album thoughtfully and stared at the title for a full minute before giving another drunken grin and waving his wand in a somewhat haphazard manner.

The album now read ‘Family’ instead of ‘Friends’.

Colin stood up, brushed off his knees from the debris of his drunken wallowing and began making his way to the kitchen. He was sure that Ron had left a hangover potion the last time he was here, Colin winced- the things were foul but he would definitely need to be sober for a cross-country portkey. He had family to visit.


End file.
